RTI Awarded $1.5M U.S. Government Contract to Standardize DoD Cybersecurity Technology

Migrating to an Open, Standard Data Model will Decrease Costs for Building and Maintaining Cybersecurity in Systems Across the DoD

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – June 25, 2019 – Real-Time Innovations (RTI), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) connectivity company, today announced that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase II contract to advance a large Department of Defense (DoD) system within the U.S. Navy. RTI was selected for its standards expertise and ability to deliver a common set of data models and application control interfaces that will enable interoperability across combat systems.

In order to meet advanced cybersecurity requirements, the Navy was looking for more effective mechanisms to upgrade their cyber tools suite. System complexity and the proprietary nature of how these systems communicate has adversely impacted their upgrade cycles. For this initiative, RTI will dramatically reduce the cyber tool upgrade cycle by providing the ability to rapidly install, test and deploy new tools, configuration files and settings within the Navy’s Aegis combat systems. RTI will deliver common, open cyber tool data models and application control interfaces that will enable plug-and-play cyber tool interoperability.  Additionally, this technology will enable the capability to securely, reliably and rapidly deliver updates to the cyber infrastructure into the future.  

RTI's software already provides the standards-compliant connectivity foundation for hundreds of the world’s most mission-critical Aerospace and Defense systems. The solution will be built upon a foundation of open standards leveraging proven Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 9 technology that has already been commercialized and deployed across the U.S. Navy. RTI will work with the Navy and other industry stakeholders to pursue standardization of the cyber data models and interfaces by international standards bodies to encourage widespread adoption.

"Standardizing cyber tool data models is something that doesn’t exist today, but is extremely important. It can apply to any complex system of systems where it’s difficult to achieve interoperability between new and existing tools and components," said Paul Pazandak, Director of Research at RTI. "This migration away from one-off solutions to common, standard data models will ultimately drive down costs for building and maintaining cybersecurity into combat systems across the U.S. Navy. RTI is proud to lead this initiative with the DoD while also applying these technologies to other real-time distributed systems. By leveraging these efforts into RTI’s general product suite, we can pursue additional markets where cyber tool interoperability can be applied."

The federally-funded SBIR program facilitates the financing of small-business research and development activities. The program enables the creation of concepts and inventions with significant potential to advance the development of innovative products, and their eventual transition into DoD programs.  The program’s chief role is to bridge the gap between the performance of basic science and the commercialization of resulting innovations.

About RTI
Real-Time Innovations (RTI) is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) connectivity company. The RTI Connext® Databus is a software framework that shares information in real time, making applications work together as one, integrated system. It connects across field, fog and cloud. Its reliability, security, performance and scalability are proven in the most demanding industrial systems. Deployed systems include medical devices and imaging; wind, hydro and solar power; autonomous planes, trains and cars; traffic control; Oil and Gas; robotics, ships, and defense.

RTI lives at the intersection of functional artificial intelligence and pervasive networking^SM.

RTI is the largest vendor of products based on the Object Management Group (OMG) Data Distribution Service™ (DDS) standard. RTI is privately held and headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Download a free 30-day trial of the latest, fully-functional Connext DDS software today:  https://www.rti.com/downloads. 

This material is based upon work supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. N6833519C0290. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research.